The Promise of Change

Chapter 17



They dashed into the lobby of the inn. The rain had not let up.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Edwards,” the desk clerk said cheerfully. “I see you got caught in the rain, too.” There was a roaring fire in the inn’s sitting area, with a few dampened guests gathered around it. “We’ve laid a fire in your room. All it requires is a match,” she added with a quick glance at Alex, followed by a knowing smile.

Walking past the desk, Alex took Sarah’s hand and drew her toward the stairs. She threw him a questioning look.

“You need to get into dry clothes, right?” he asked with a sweep of his hands indicating her crumpled, clammy clothes.

“Yes, but what about you?”

“I’m English. I’m used to being cold and wet.” He shrugged his shoulder. “They have robes in the room?”

“Yes—”

“Then I’ll be fine. I’m more worried about you right now.” He directed her upstairs as they had this conversation.

The thought of him in her room made her shiver, but not with cold.

Once inside her room, he walked over to the fireplace and, kneeling down, pulled out a match to start the fire. Without looking at her, he said, “Why don’t you take a hot shower? I’ll make sure the fire catches.”

Sarah hesitated. The intimacy of the scene was hard to miss.

“Go ahead, you’re safe. I won’t invade your privacy. Unless you ask me to,” he added with a grin.

Even amidst the nervous flutters in her stomach, she noted his pronunciation of ‘privacy’ with a short ‘i.’ Perhaps a hot shower would help calm her agitated nerves.

After starting the fire, Alex found himself alone in the room, and used that opportunity to strip off his wet clothing and rummage in the armoire for a robe. He tried not to think of her naked in the shower, just a few steps away. Instead, he occupied himself with ordering hot tea for the room.

Standing beneath the hot spray, she finally warmed up for the first time since the rain started. She hoped it would steady her erratic pulse, but no such luck. The thought of him in the next room . . . her room . . . was intoxicating. She stayed in the shower longer than necessary, unsure what she would find when she opened the bathroom door.

She turned off the water before he thought she’d washed down the drain. She’d failed to bring a change of clothes into the bathroom, so putting on her robe she took a deep breath and stepped out of the bathroom, toweling her hair casually, like it was perfectly normal to have him in her room.

She stopped in her tracks. Seated in one of the wing chairs in front of the now-blazing fire with a small tea tray on the side table, he wore the inn’s complimentary robe, his rumpled clothes lying on the floor by the fire to dry, making the fact that the robe was the only thing he wore even more obvious.

The deep breath she took before she opened the door left her in an audible sigh. He looked up. It was dim in the room with the storm still darkening the sky, the fire the only source of light. It cast a golden glow across his handsome face, where a series of emotions flickered. First, surprise, then admiration, and finally desire.

He crossed the ample room that suddenly seemed small. He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Better?”

“Yes,” she breathed, tilting her head up, his face so close to hers. He leaned down, taking her face in his hands, kissing her softly. She dropped the towel she held and threaded her fingers around his neck, pulling him closer. His hair was still damp.

He coiled his fingers in the wet hair at the nape of her neck, moving his lips over hers with increasing intensity. Her damp skin smelled of jasmine and rain.

A voice in the back of her head said this is insane. She ignored it. Instead, she took his bottom lip gently between her teeth. He groaned. Sarah sighed in return.

“Sarah.” He spoke her name against her lips. “Sarah.” He pulled back, his hand cupping her throat, caressing her staccato pulse with his thumb. “Sarah, tell me now . . . is this what you want? If not, I will leave. All you have to do is ask. But thirty more seconds of this, and I can’t vouch for my self-control.” He searched her face with his fathomless eyes, almost black now with desire.

She took a deep breath, as if she was about to dive into the deep end of the pool. “Yes,” she said with a sigh. “This is what I want.”

He kissed her again, more urgently this time. Retreating a step, he took her hand and led her to the bed.



She didn’t move, afraid that she would wake up from this dream. Her murmured, “no apology necessary,” and Alex’s seductive grin and tender parting kiss were part of that dream.

She sighed, trying to keep consciousness at bay, but she was pulled inexorably to wakefulness. She rolled over and caught his scent. The other pillow had an indentation where his head had lain. It wasn’t a dream. Of course, how could she expect it to have been a dream, when she’d hardly slept long enough to enter that state?

She waited for the panic to set in. This was completely out of character for her. She wouldn’t think about the only other time she fell this fast for someone. No panic. She stretched like a satisfied cat, smiling at the memories. For someone who had slept very little, she felt remarkably well.

Alex had snuck out of the inn in the pre-dawn with a promise to be back by nine. He thought it best that he didn’t come down for breakfast in his stiff, rumpled clothes from yesterday, murmuring something about her reputation. He’s such a gentleman, she thought.

She reluctantly climbed out of bed and tried to locate her robe. It lay in a pool on the floor a few feet from the bed where Alex had slipped it off her shoulders. She staggered to the bathroom as if she was drunk, stopping in front of the mirror.

She stared in dismay at the image. There was no denying what she’d done last night. It was readily apparent in her face. Her lips were swollen, her eyes too bright, and her cheeks flushed. Add to that her tangled, wild hair, and she was a walking billboard for sex. She cringed. A little butterfly fluttered in her stomach. Was that panic, or excitement? Definitely a little bit of both.

Sex was not a recreational activity for her. She knew this was a bit old-fashioned, but according to the Book of Sarah, sex was more than just a physical activity, a union of two bodies. It was an emotional, spiritual, and even intellectual merging of two people who cared deeply for one another.

So how did her actions of last night fit with her feelings for Alex? Or vice versa? And how did Alex feel about last night?

The shower cleared her head and calmed some of the rising panic, but the consequences of last night’s events chipped away at the bliss she initially felt when she woke.

What was I doing? she asked herself yet again. How many times this week did I ask myself that question, and how many times had I shoved it aside? There was no shoving it aside anymore. She only had two more days in England, and she didn’t know how this would end, but it couldn’t end well. Could it?

Thrusting further introspection aside, she looked for something to occupy her mind until it was time to meet Alex for breakfast. She wondered if they were fooling anyone by putting on this charade.

Picking up the TV remote, she clicked on the news. She hadn’t seen the TV news since she’d been in England, and come to think of it, she hadn’t missed it.

As the news played in the background, she grabbed her phone, and with her tongue firmly in her cheek, texted Ann and Becca: “Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.”

Laughing at her foolishness, she turned back to the TV in time to catch the name ‘Fraser.’ On the screen was a heavy-set man, his broad face capped by slightly thinning brown hair, dressed in a conservative suit. He stood at a podium surrounded by a few dour looking suit-clad gentlemen.

The caption on the bottom of the screen read: “Robert Fraser to run for Prime Minister.” Sarah gasped. Alex’s brother. Grabbing the remote, she turned up the volume, catching him mid-speech.

“. . . announce my candidature for Prime Minister under the Conservative Party. I will support the principles of Thatcherism: free markets, deregulation, financial discipline, tax cuts, and weaker trade unions. It was the dedication to these principles that cured Britain’s economic decline in the 1970s. It is the dedication to these same principles that will cure Britain’s current economic crisis.”

Ironic that Robert criticized Alex’s chosen profession, when he had quite a flair for the dramatic himself. Then again, didn’t all politicians, she thought a bit cynically.

He wasn’t as good-looking as Alex, but that could just be her bias. She wondered whether Robert had told his brother before making the announcement and if so, what Alex thought about his brother’s decision. More importantly to Robert, she supposed, was whether Alex would vote for him.

Turning off the TV, she grabbed her bag and headed down to meet the politician’s handsome brother.